


Advanced Placement

by maybetwice



Category: The Kiss Quotient - Helen Hoang
Genre: Early love, F/M, Making Love, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21927628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/maybetwice
Summary: Stella is sure there is something more she needs lessons on, but there's too much she doesn't know to decide where to start.
Relationships: Stella Lane/Michael Phan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Advanced Placement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iamtheenemy (Steph)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steph/gifts).



Stella generally doesn’t bother reading women’s magazines like Glamour and Cosmo, because they so rarely offer truly novel tips. An ice cube, a strand of pearls, a feather and a scarf around Michael’s eyes, none of it is really that adventurous. And after all this time with Michael’s lessons, on sex and what romance can be, Stella is certain enough that she will be learning from him for a long time. There’s excitement in not knowing what she doesn’t know, in knowing what she has yet to learn, and if Michael dislikes her suggested curriculum pages pressed between his pillows, Stella has no evidence to suggest he would ever ask her to stop.

Evidence is, after all, the best tool she has to answer the questions burning inside her. She is a capable professional, and one of her favorite personal skills is finding the right match between an answer that presents itself to her through analysis and the misplaced question that corresponds to it.

Which is what led her around to reading magazines, flipping through their promises of hot sex and adventurous play, and only leaving them abandoned in her recycling with frustrated disdain. Stella knows plenty about the male perineum, thank you, and if that was the full extent of dangerous and exciting sexual play, then there would be no market for the sorts of things she has heard whispers of, but nothing concrete. The thing eluding her. The key to something grander and better than already-incredible sex and the satisfying relationship with a man she loves.

There’s more here that she’s missing. That much is obvious to her, but the exact size and shape of the absent knowledge is unknown, and the information isn’t easily accessible to her. Stella knows far too much about what data can be collected about her to do something so obvious as a Google search, but even that isn’t helpful without the right question. 

It occurs to her to just ask Michael. The effort of being entirely straightforward with what she wants is a new one for Stella, but it’s an effective method of communicating with Michael about what she wants. This time, however, she doesn’t know what she wants. She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, but Michael has led in everything else, and Stella doesn’t think that she can learn to be adventurous if she cannot also learn to be bold.

When she finally does summon up the courage to just look more into the whispered world of truly adventurous things, Stella comforts herself with the thought that this is merely research. It is best to know what there is in the world, to determine what she does and doesn’t want from it. Sensible. It’s only _sensible._

But while she appreciates the candid honesty of the individuals maintaining the well-detailed web presence of a large and apparently popular club, Stella is able to rapidly conclude that she isn’t going to be into this sort of scene, happy as she is that somebody is. She adds spanking, humiliation, and domination to the list of things she is happy enough that other people have, but cannot be for her. 

“Are there advanced lessons I should be asking for?” she bursts out one morning over breakfast, pressing her mouth together and feeling for the comfortable seams of her tailored dress.

“Lessons?” asks Michael, looking up from his coffee and phone with a startled expression. “Do you mean, like, the sort of thing we did when we met?”

“It was sex, Michael,” she says, breezing flippantly past his surprise. “And yes, I mean that I don’t know whether there are… more advanced things I should learn.”

“You aren’t planning on deploying them on some secret boyfriend?” Michael asks, but his mouth twitches with a fond smile even as he does. “Anyway, I’m not flattering you, but I’m not sure you need, uh, advanced study. What you do is working for me.”

But it won’t always work, Stella knows, even as she slips out for work in the morning. Her laptop is full of work that she needs to focus on, but she just can’t tear herself from the memory of Michael’s obvious surprise that she might ask for more lessons, to find new ways to please him like he pleases her.

It occupies her thoughts throughout the day, small memories and fantasies sprinkled over the mundane routine of her regular work. She starts to eat a protein bar from her desk for lunch, and thinks of Michael when she stops herself and goes for a walk and a shamelessly overpriced salad that she eats in a sunlit courtyard. Stella thinks of Michael and his day-old stubble, rough and delicious against her inner thighs when he kisses from the bone in her ankle, all the way to her sex. She thinks of him telling her to take care of herself, and allows herself to text him about her effort to do what he suggests.

And she thinks of it that night when they make love in her bedroom, between perfectly creased sheets that go limp and wrinkled against her skin when they finish.

Making love is a precious thing to have lessons for, although Stella privately thinks that it’s not something she wants Michael to instruct her on. Instead, it seems more like a dance than regular sex often is. It’s the sort of thing you can only really do well when you know the deepest parts of someone, and that isn’t something you can take lessons on.

That is the first thing that occurs to Stella when she stands under the stream of steaming hot water while Michael tidies the room after their lovemaking, a soft act of such honest devotion that she cannot help appreciating it. Their lovemaking, the warm glow collected in the pit of her stomach, none of it is possible without Michael also knowing and loving her enough to lay out her favorite pajamas before she returns to bed with him.

“I want to learn everything there is to know about lovemaking,” she told him with her hands folded on top of the blankets, her gaze flitting from one side of Michael’s face to the other. At his quizzical look, Stella rests her hand on his and continues in solemn tones: “But I don’t want to be instructed on this. I want us to both learn.” 

“Okay,” Michael answers, rolling thoughtfully between the two syllables. It’s a sign that he’s taking her very seriously, and Stella wants to kiss him for it. 

When she sees his warm smile, openly fond and sparkling, she dips her head and does so, pulling his hand onto her waist. “How about I lead this lesson, then?”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy yuletide!! I read _The Kiss Quotient_ earlier this year and feel deeply, completely in love with Stella and Michael. I wanted to do justice to Stella's character, and found some inspiration in your thoughts about her making love for the first time! Thank you so much for a lovely prompt!


End file.
